Author Archives: DemDigest

Global Voices: Journalism Under Threat in Nicaragua

     

The opposition group Nicaraguan Patriotic Alliance (APN) claimed responsibility on social media for a series of small explosions Sunday, Reuters reports (HT: Cipher Brief).  Nicaragua has experienced demonstrations against the… Read more »

New sanctions target Cubazuela links

     

The United States hit Venezuela with a new round of sanctions on Tuesday, targeting the crisis-battered country’s ties with Cuba, which supports Nicolas Maduro in Caracas, AFP reports: The move… Read more »

Egypt’s anti-corruption protests add to regional insecurity

     

Chaotic protests across Egypt this weekend — prompted by videos exposing corruption in President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s military-backed government — underscore the population’s weariness with economic hardship due in part to government austerity measures, according… Read more »

Iranian democracy: playing the long game

     

Civil society activist Mariam Memarsadeghi and her NGO Tavaana aren’t planning for the “day of” the revolution, the way so many other opponents of the Iranian regime seem to be…. Read more »

Tunisia: populism and cronyism risk ‘slide toward authoritarian tendencies’

     

Tunisia’s hopeful transition to a democratic future faces a new challenge. Voters in the country have delivered a sharp rebuke to their political elite. In the first round of presidential… Read more »

Why the world needs the West: Democratic resilience & renewal

     

The main error of liberal internationalism is that its advocates have mistaken an aspiration for reality, and by so doing have gotten a basic chunk of causality exactly backwards, argues… Read more »

China’s authoritarian model poses long-term threat to democracies

     

China poses a long-term threat to the United States, to liberal democracy and to the international order,  John C. Rood, undersecretary of defense for policy, told a policy forum in… Read more »

A strategy for democracies in a geopolitically competitive world

     

Russia and China increasingly are working to bring multilateral architectures into closer alignment with their own authoritarian norms, notes foreign policy analyst Will Moreland. Such a transformation is not in the interests… Read more »

A ‘confrontation of monumental proportions is coming’ in Hong Kong

     

The Sharp Sword stealth drones and the intercontinental ballistic missiles and the truck-borne monuments to the Communist struggle are ready. Flowers have been planted and red lanterns hung along all… Read more »